Engineers develop haptic feedback system for keyhole surgery

Engineering students at the University of Leeds have built a
system that allows surgeons to keep a sense of touch when
operating using keyhole techniques.

One of the main drawbacks of keyhole surgery is that surgeons
are often unable to feel the biological structure they are
operating on, they tend to be guided by sight alone. The haptic feedback
system -- dubbed "Palpatronix" -- aims to help cancer
surgeons who like to be able to feel the tissue that they are
removing -- an important way of double-checking where the tumour is
and whether it is malignant or benign.

The students built a computer-generated environment for virtual
surgery and a handheld device that applies pressure to the users'
hands in response to what the surgical devices are touching. The
team built the system to simulate keyhole surgery on the liver.
They took measurements using a force sensor from a soft block of
silicon to simulate what surgeons would
"feel" during keyhole procedures and fed these into the handheld
device. To test the system they embedded hard ball-bearings into
the artificial liver and checked whether users of the system could
find them.

Engineering student Earle Jamieson said: "Haptic devices that
give users sensory feedback are becoming more common in surgery,
but none of them quite match that true hands-on feeling. With our
system, users can interact with the tissue they are operating on
throughout the surgical procedure."

Supervisor Dr Peter Culmer, a Senior Translational Research Fellow
in Surgical Technologies, said: "Judging from the feedback the
students have received from practising surgeons, this system has
real, clinical potential."

They hope that it could be used as a training tool to help
surgeons get a real feel for keyhole surgery. Later, it could be used in operating
theatres.

Check out the photos above, or you can watch a video explaining
the project below: